310 HISTORY OP THE GRANGE MOVEMENT; OR, 



price that day, or else agree not to outbid each other, 

 and divide their profits in proportion to the amount 

 each man has bought." 



Thus the farmer is robbed year after year, and when 

 he utters his complaint, there are loud outcries from 

 the robbers that his grievances are purely imaginary, 

 and that he has brought all his woes upon himself by 

 an excessive production of grain, and is experiencing 

 only the evils which attend upon an overstocked 

 market. 



But this outcry about a surplus of grain in the West 

 is mere folly. The agriculture of the Western and 

 especially the North-western States is of necessity con- 

 fined to grain. " The North-west not only must pro- 

 duce cereals, but must produce a surplus. The hope 

 that growth of manufactures may create a sufficient 

 1 home market' in the farming States is cherished by 

 many, in complete disregard of necessary conditions of 

 manufacture, or the ratio of production to consumption 

 of agricultural products. The average consumption 

 of wheat is four and seventy-six hundreths bushels 

 per capita ; and of all cereals, including the quantity 

 fed to animals, thirty-six bushels per capita,. If it were 

 possible to gather up all the hands employed in all the 

 cotton mills of the United States and deposit them in 

 a single county in Iowa, either one of the fourteen 

 counties in that State now produces more wheat than 

 all those hands could consume. All the hands em- 

 ployed in the factories and shops of the United States, 

 if added to the present population of Illinois, would 

 consume less than half the surplus of cereals now pro- 

 duced by that State. A mill of 273 hands on every 

 farm of 100 acres of wheat would only suffice to con- 



